


Dramatis Personae

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Jealousy, Love Triangles, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 23:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11046384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: “He's kissing her. Natalie Rhodes her. Nikki Heat her. He's kissing an ambiguity of pronouns, not one of which is her her.”





	Dramatis Personae

**Author's Note:**

> An insert for Nikki Heat (3 x 11). This assumes the originally intended episode order of “Poof! You’re Dead” preceding this episode. That’s not how they aired, but story-wise, my head!canon insists that’s how they happened. 

 

He's kissing her. Natalie Rhodes her. Nikki Heat her. He's kissing an ambiguity of pronouns, not one of which is _her_ her. 

_Beckett_

_Detective_

_Kate_

The elevator doors bump closed, and he's kissing another her entirely. 

She gathers her things mechanically. She's not surprised, she supposes. He's just broken things off with the ex-wife, and this is his pattern, isn't it? Starlets and supermodels. That's who he kisses, so she's not surprised. 

Disgusted, maybe. That's what she thinks she is as she drops her keys in her bag. Blazer off, coat on. A glance at the desk phone, a check of her cell. No messages, no progress on the case. Nothing to stick around for, and isn’t that what she was just telling the two of them? Isn’t that how she finally shook off her shadow? Both her shadows. 

_He was kissing her_

She guesses she's a little bit disgusted to find he's exactly what he seems to be. Exactly what he always has been. 

She calls for the elevator, and it's empty. She blinks at that. Hesitates, as if she doesn't quite understand how it can be. He was kissing her right here, and now they're both gone. Now they're off to his place. Her hotel, more likely, and a memory presents itself. A logic puzzle solved. 

Alexis was away. The last time he was kissing some Nikki Heat wannabe, Alexis was away, so this time they'd go to her hotel, and what the hell does it matter to her where they go? Where he goes or has gone. Who he kisses or has kissed. 

The elevator starts to close. That's how long she's been standing there. It starts to close, and when she dives through, the air is heavy with perfume she doesn't wear. She'd _never_ wear. 

She wonders if he likes it. 

For a flickering instant, she wonders if he does, but then the elevator is moving, and she remembers she's disgusted. She remembers he's exactly what he's always seemed to be. 

* * *

Josh is free. Someone switches with someone else. She loses the thread ten seconds into the conversation, but he's unexpectedly free. It's a good thing, she tells herself, though there’s a moment when the effort to peeling off one set of clothes and contemplating another seems insurmountable. 

There’s a moment, but she’s past it. She's in motion. 

She casts it all off. Black wool and crisp french blue. Buttons and cuffs and a starched collar. She lets it all fall where it will, her mind made up. She wants the line of demarcation to be clear. 

She shimmies into skinny jeans and something a little daring on top. Red. Purple. Changeable with the light. She opens her eyes wide as she leans into the bathroom mirror. She drags black pencil in a heavy arc. One eye, then the other. She lets her jaw fall open and paints the soft _O_ of her mouth in a darker shade than she'll wear at work. 

Her heels are by the door. The same pair she'd kicked off on the way in, and they'd work. They'd definitely work with the version of her she's painted on right quick. Kate, not Beckett, because that's who Josh knows. That's who he likes, and four-inch spike heels or not, he doesn't have to look up to her.

She kicks them aside. One foot half in, she kicks them aside, turning her ankle a little. Cursing as she hobbles on it back to the bedroom and into her closet. She rummages, cursing louder. Getting frustrated for no good reason until she finds them. Harness boots, chunky and heavy. The flattest things she owns.

She hauls them on, awkward and red faced with it. Falling back on to the edge of the bed as she tries to make her protesting ankle behave. She wins the struggle. She lies panting up at the ceiling a minute, and the thought that the last thing in the world she wants to do is go out floats through her head. It comes with a twinge. A flash of something she clamps a lid on. 

A flash that has her up in an instant. Grabbing her keys and out the door in an instant. 

 

* * *

She doesn't know the place. Josh picked it, and she should have checked. As she hands over her trailing scarf and one of her more broken-in leather jackets to a smooth-skirted hostess in a double strand of pearls, she realizes she definitely should have checked. 

"Kate." Josh smiles and stands as he comes around the table to push her chair in. Because it's the chair-pushing-in kind of place. "I'm glad you were free."

"Me too." She smiles back, though it feels stiff. He's wearing a sport coat. A white button-down, and it's not like she's never seen him like this, but it throws her right now. "This is new." She’s making excuses, though he hasn't said a thing. He’d never say a thing. "To me," she adds off his puzzled look. "Obviously. A little under-dressed." 

"You look amazing," he says, sweeping a glance over her, and she believes him. 

The stupid swell of embarrassment bursts like a balloon. She relaxes into her chair. Into herself, as he tells her about the place. How he found it, what on the menu he likes best. She tells him about her favorite places. About her parents' favorites from back in the day and what they are now. 

There’s wine. It’s good, though she thinks as the first sip goes down that she’d rather have a  beer right now. There’s food she has to be careful with. Tastes she nips from his fork when he offers, and the warmth of his fingers closing around her wrist to steady her hand when she offers hers. 

It’s all quite lovely, she tells herself. Reminds herself over and over, though she doesn’t realize she’s doing it until his pager goes off. Until his brow furrows and he kisses her cheek as he excuses himself to call in. 

She doesn’t realize she’s doing it until Natalie Rhodes drops into the chair across from her. 

“So there really is a boyfriend.” 

  

* * *

“What are you . . . doing?” 

There’s a _here_ that gets lost along the way. It gets lost as Kate takes in yet another disguise. The wig is red this time. Shoulder-length waves framing her face and make-up in an entirely new palette. An entirely new complexion, and it’s convincing. _She’s_ convincing, though as what Kate isn’t sure. 

“Tailed you from your apartment.” She snaps open a compact. Pouts at herself.  

“Tailed?” Kate repeats dumbly. “ _You_ tailed _me?_ ”

“You really didn’t know?” She turns a grin on Kate. “Guess I’ve picked up a few things from you.” 

 _Picked up._ The phrase snags at her brain. It raises a possibility that has the color rising in Kate’s cheeks. Fury and consternation as the image of him kissing her flashes against the backs of her eyelids. “Castle?”  

“Lost him.” Something sour flicks across Natalie’s face, but it’s gone in an instant. Her gaze drops to Kate’s hands. To the set of her shoulders and the lift of her chin. She’s settling into the same lines. A mirror Kate would like to smash. “Honestly? I really thought I’d find him at your place, Detective.” The setting distracts her, then. The coordinated movement of servers. Josh, just visible through the glass of the vestibule. “Or here,” she adds absently as she studies him. “With you.” 

“Why?” 

The question feels disingenuous, even as it passes her lips. It thumps against the wall of her chest from the inside, and she’s nervous all of a sudden, except not nervous exactly. She’s triumphant, because he’s _not_ with her. An ambiguity of pronouns. He’s not with _her_ , and it leaves her feeling exposed. It leaves her feeling caught in a disguise that’s every bit as ridiculous as the one staring back at her from across the table, and still the question comes again. An ebullient butterfly thump against the wall of her chest from the inside. 

“Why would Castle be . . . with me?” 

Natalie levels a narrow-eyed gaze at her. The one she’s come quickly to hate. “You’re not that stupid, Kate.”  

She pushes to her feet. She’s a hundred feet tall in her four-inch spike heels. Taller than Josh, who’s suddenly there.

“And you’re not her type,” she tells him, turning away even as she says it. Dismissing him. The very possibility of him. “Not Nikki’s type, anyway.” 

She’s gone, then, and Josh is blinking. He’s waiting, but there’s only silence. 

“Who on earth was that?” 

He’s half laughing, half scowling. His hands are braced on the table like he might go after her. Like he might be called on to defend someone’s honor, and he thinks it’s peculiar. He thinks it’s a little funny, but he’s not particularly concerned. 

“No one,” Kate says. It rings true. Beautifully, troublingly true. “She’s no one.” 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I thought initially this might be a chapter of "All She Wants Is," but it didn't seem to fit there.


End file.
